Best Sim-only Deals guide Discussion

EE were quite hard work to negotiate with over the phone and it took a couple of goes to get a decent deal.

Up until last week, I was on an iPhone contract with a sharer sim which was coming in at over £90 per month for 100gb of shared data. I’ve been counting the days for it to end.

I was planning to move both myself and my wife to the Three £20 unlimited deal which works out as £17.50 per month over 24 months when you factor in the 6 months at half price. I also wanted greater roaming destinations including the USA. Ideally we wanted to stay with EE due to their coverage being better at the places we work.

I first called EE to discuss my options and talked about that Three deal. They said they don’t do unlimited data but that I could have 100GB of shared data with two “swappables” on a “Smart Plan” so I could have the USA data for £30 per month down from £35 per month. They also offered to reduce the sharer sim down from £13 to £5 if I manually gifted the data. This worked out at £35 per month for both of us (or £17.50 each per month each) so I thought I’d go with it since I was told you could only get the roam further add-on and faster 4G speeds on the Smart and not Essential Plans (which I think I was offered for £20 per month).

After further reading online, I then learned that you don’t need a Smart Plan to get the faster EE speeds (as the cap on Essential plans was recently removed) and that “Go Roam” could be added as a 30 day add-on (it was previously a six month add-on) - so I was quite perturbed. I went onto EE chat to ask to go onto the Essential plan and was told it would be eight working days to cancel the order and revert back to my previous plan which I wasn’t keen to do. I wasn’t convinced that the £20 offer would be available then so after a bit of chat they told me that I could apply my wife’s NHS discount to the plans. I wasn’t convinced this was going to work but they did it and took the discount from the original price of the contracts before the previous discounts. This means I got the Smart Plan for £23 and the sharer sim for £2.40 per month. I’m not sure they should have done this as the telephone team were quite adamant further discounts could not be applied but I’m quite happy to be paying £25.40 for the both of us!

This sort of thing happened to me before when I called back Sky during my cooling off period to say I could find the price cheaper so it might be worth a follow-up calling if afterwards you think you haven’t got the best deal!

I got a new sim only contract from Three yesterday with 12gb and unlimited texts/calls for £12 a month. Very happy with that.

I pay £10/mth for 8gb; 4G here and abroad; unlimited text, calls and unrestricted use in all EU countries + others.
And this on a cancel anytime basis. No contract just monthly DD payments. Why hasn't MSE found this one? Maybe they didn't offer sufficient commission? :beer:

lilnixon wrote: »

I'm a long time Three customer and was on an 8GB essential plan for £13.32 (unlimited txts and calls, go roam in Europe only, no go-binge and no personal hotspot) but I wasn't happy paying this amount so I just phoned them up this morning and got an 8GB advanced plan with unlimited txts and calls, go roam around the world, personal hotspot and go-binge for £9! Three initially said the deal was £10 over the phone but when I told them the comparison website where I saw the offer for £9 they dropped it. Very happy with the result and a bargain for anyone looking to switch!

I did this too 4GB essentials plan @£9.22 changed to 8GB Advanced plan @£9.
I did consider a brief switch on to a £5 bundle at Asda and then switching back via topcashback to get £45.